AEO briefing: Google adds links to AI answers and a site-wide AI control

Window checked: 23 September to 23 October 2026. Labels: Proven means the primary source we opened states it. Practice means it comes from secondary reporting or an author’s own data. Experimental means a proposal or draft. We list at the end what we could not verify.

Google puts more links higher in AI answers

• Proven Hema Budaraju, Google’s VP of Product Management for Search, wrote on 15 October that Google has made “continued and substantial increases” to inline links in AI experiences and is launching updates that show them higher in responses more often.
• Proven Google says it will test a dedicated section at the top of a response that highlights official pages, and has started testing clickable creator and publisher names on AI Mode video results that lead to their Search profiles.
• Proven News carousels that highlight Preferred Sources are rolling out to more locations and languages. Google says use of Preferred Sources has grown more than 7x since the start of the year. That is Google’s own figure and the post gives no base number.
• Practice Search Engine Roundtable reports that Google would not provide click data for these features but said it will introduce additional metrics over time. We could not confirm that statement on Google’s own page.

Google lists a site-wide control for generative AI features

• Proven Google’s “Control what you share with Google Search” page, last updated 21 October 2026, says you can manage your site’s inclusion in generative AI features, including AI Overviews and AI Mode, with the Search generative AI control in Search Console. It applies site-wide.
• Proven The same page lists the robots meta tag, data-nosnippet and X-Robots-Tag as ways to adjust how content is presented. It does not say whether those affect AI Overviews or AI Mode.
• Practice PPC Land reports that the control has include, exclude and inherit settings, that excluding a site removes impressions from those features, and that it takes one to two days to apply. We did not verify those details on Google’s help page.

Google on robots.txt, as reported

• Practice Search Engine Roundtable and PPC Land both report on a Google Search Central video published 21 October. Their summaries: robots.txt controls crawl access, not what a system does with data after it has crawled it; only user-agent, allow, disallow and sitemap rules are understood; and to block a specific AI crawler you name its token. We could not open the video itself.

What AI assistants send: small studies, same direction

• Practice Marie Haynes (21 October) analysed 12 months of GA4 data from 100 sites with over 145 million sessions. ChatGPT sessions were 0.62% of Google organic sessions. Among the 55 sites that tracked conversions, ChatGPT converted at 13.8% against 3.02% for Google organic, and Google organic drove 96.5% of all conversions. The dataset is not public and the piece is an opinion argument.
• Practice Kevin Indig (19 October) studied 12 sites. Much of the recent growth in Direct traffic was automated: one site had 409,000 Direct sessions of which 198 were engaged. Direct sessions with identifiable AI traces were about 0.003% of the total. With only 17 and 35 usable weekly observations on his test sites, he could not establish a reliable link between AI visibility and Direct or branded traffic.

Both samples are small and non-random, so treat them as directional, not as an industry benchmark.

What we could not verify

Reports of ChatGPT ads expanding to more countries (21 October), an ads test in Google AI Mode, and a Bing Webmaster Tools “Topics Portfolio” beta appeared in this window. The primary pages were blocked or missing when we tried, so we are not reporting details.

Sources

1. Google: Updates to AI Mode and AI Overviews (15 Oct 2026)
2. Google Search Central: Control what you share with Google Search
3. Search Engine Roundtable: Google updates links in AI Mode and AI Overviews
4. PPC Land: Google lists 7 ways to keep content out of Search AI
5. Search Engine Roundtable: Google video on robots.txt rules
6. PPC Land: Google says robots.txt limits AI crawling, not what bots do with data
7. Marie Haynes: GEO is a distraction (21 Oct 2026)
8. Kevin Indig, Growth Memo: Does AI drive more Direct traffic? (19 Oct 2026)